A cartoon by Charlie Hankin from the December 22&29 New Yorker:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art viewed as Neapolitan ice cream.
The actual Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC:
And some Neapolitan ice cream:
On the ice cream, from Wikipedia:
Neapolitan ice cream, sometimes known as harlequin ice cream, is made up of blocks of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream side by side in the same container (typically with no packaging in between). Some brands intermix the flavors more, though the separate flavors are still clearly visible. [sometimes vanilla in the middle, sometimes strawberry, sometimes chocolate]
Neapolitan ice cream was named in the late 19th century as a reflection of its presumed origins in the cuisine of the Italian city of Naples, and the many Neapolitan immigrants who brought their expertise in frozen desserts with them to the United States. Spumoni was introduced to the United States in the 1870s as Neapolitan-style ice cream. Early recipes used a variety of flavors; however, the number of three molded together was a common denominator, to resemble the Italian flag … More than likely, chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry became the standard for the reason that they were the most popular flavors in the United States at the time of introduction.
The Italian flag is green – white – red:
so that the closest you can get with the three ice cream flavors is chocolate (dark) – vanilla (white) – strawberry (pink, close to red). The block in #3 has the chocolate in the middle, but commercial Neapolitan ice cream often has the strawberry in the middle. There’s no fixed arrangement.
On the artist, who hasn’t appeared on this blog before: his website is not especially informative:
I’m a painter and animator living in Brooklyn. I do a comedy webseries with Matt Porter called Good Cop Great Cop. We also do a series for Comedy Central called New Timers.
All of the cartoons I’ve drawn for The New Yorker are available for purchase.
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